Step back in time at Duluth’s Great Lakes Aquarium in its new, largest exhibit experience to date. Opening May 23, 2025, Lava to Lakes is Minnesota’s ultimate origin story, tracing our history to a time before the Land of 10,000 Lakes, when the region was covered by giant, ancient seas.
Did you know sharks, jellyfish, and colossal prehistoric predator fish once swam where we live? This immersive exhibit experience brings visitors up close to these animals with two new touchpools, one featuring sharks and the other featuring moon jellyfish. The exhibit also showcases sea nettles, blue blubber jellyfish, ratfish, corals, horseshoe crabs, and unusual giant isopods sometimes called “vacuum cleaners of the deep.” Look up and see a full-scale reproduction of the prehistoric Dunkleosteus, a giant, now extinct, armored fish, suspended in a watchful gaze over the gallery.
Discover life’s ancient secrets hidden written in the landscape all around us. From rock formations to fossil rich earth, Lava to Lakes tells the story of the connection between geological history and our state’s rich natural resources today.
“From the cold, fast rivers of the North Shore to the Minnesota River Valley’s granite quarries to the Banded Iron Formations in the Iron Range, every part of who we are as a state is rooted in the geologic processes that came before us,” says Julie Marano, Great Lakes Aquarium Exhibit Designer and Project Manager. “In every corner of our state, we can see and feel the ways life and land are inextricably connected and have been from the beginning of Earth itself.”
Lava to Lakes is positioned in a 2,500 square foot gallery on Great Lakes Aquarium’s second floor. The nearly $1 million exhibit is funded in part by a grant from the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund. This is the fourth Aquarium project to receive Minnesota Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment funding since it began in 2009.
Great Lakes Aquarium is celebrating its 25th anniversary as a premier experience on Duluth’s waterfront and is now the most visited paid attraction in the city.
